


I Would Have Died to Get You There

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, I can't believe she let him leave, he would have taken her all the way to the wall, i want them to be happy, i want them to be together, why???????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 09:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: If Theon wasn't going to Castle Black with her, Sansa would just have to go to the Iron Islands with him.





	I Would Have Died to Get You There

“You aren’t coming,” she said. Her heart was sinking, breaking, blowing away in the wind. Of course he wasn’t. The Theon from before would have come, but this was not the same man. She probably wouldn’t have cared whether or not the old Theon came, but now she felt near sick at the thought of watching him go.

He gave a jerky nod. “”I would have taken you all the way to the wall.”

Sansa knew. Gods, did she ever.

“I would have died to get you there,” he said. The way he was looking at her, she thought that maybe he already had.

She threw her arms around him, burying her face into the fur of his coat. She hadn’t ever hugged him when they were children, and she was glad of it. She wasn’t sure she could have beared it - the way his collar bone cut into her cheek, the way his cheekbones could have cut through stone - if she had known what it was to hold him when he was whole.

For the first time, she wished he was whole. Not because she needed his help. Not because she felt that she owed him something. Sansa looked into his weary, fearful eyes, and she wanted him to be happy again.

“I wouldn’t have let you,” she told him. “Too many people have gotten hurt on my behalf. You won’t be one of them.”

Theon shook his head. “I would have. I owe -”

“You owe me nothing,” she whispered fiercely. “I will not have your death on my hands, Greyjoy. I will have your life, and it will be a good one.”

There was nothing pleasant in his face, but the way he pursed his lips signaled his surrender. “I want to go home.”

“Take me with you.”

He frowned. “To the Iron Islands?”

Sansa gave a half shrug. “I don’t have a home anymore. There’s only you.”

“But Jon -”

“Jon can’t protect me. His attentions are needed elsewhere. I want to go somewhere far away.” Somewhere she could move on. Somewhere that didn’t put any value on her name, and where her hand was not a prize. Maybe that place was the Iron Islands. Maybe she would have to cross the sea to find it. For now, Sansa supposed that Theon would have to be that place. He put far too much value on her life, but at least with him she could have one.

 

 

“Lady Sansa,” Brienne pleaded, “you need to go to Castle Black.”

Sansa pretended to check the horses once more, though she already knew that they were ready to leave. Theon had readied them before she woke up. Everything in the impromptu camp was packed away, with Theon and Podrick waiting for further instruction. If their ladies weren’t at odds, they might have left an hour prior. “I don’t.”

“Your brother -”

“Has his hands full,” she said firmly. “Fending off an army that I brought to his door is the last thing he needs.”

“Ramsay will believe you went north either way,” Podrick said. He didn’t meet her eyes. “You aren’t protecting Jon Snow by going somewhere else.”

“When people hear that Sansa Bolton has been sighted elsewhere, it will make all the difference.” She looked at her warrior, eyes narrowing while she thought. “That’s what I need you for.”

“What?” Brienne’s face, always stony, turned to ice.

“Spread rumors - you and Podrick. Theon and I will run, and you will hide our trail.”

“Theon Greyjoy,” Brienne scoffed. “He can’t protect you, my lady. You’ll die before leaving the North.”

Theon, who had been standing quietly to the side, stiffened. “I can protect her.”

“You can’t even protect yourself.”

“I don’t need to protect myself,” he said. “Lady Sansa’s survival is the only thing that matters.”

“Theon,” Sansa cut in, “go with Podrick to make sure there’s nobody nearby. We don’t want anybody seeing something they shouldn’t.”

When the two women were alone, Brienne dealt a low, cutting blow. “He’s weak. He won’t be any help.”

“He isn’t weak. He’s broken.”

“That’s hardly better.”

“Hardly,” Sansa agreed. “But I have no use for a weak man. A broken one can be fixed.”

Brienne’s gaze softened a little. “Many women have tried to fix men, my lady. It isn’t so simple as that. Some men don’t want to be fixed. It’s easier to stay broken.”

Sansa thought of the way Theon had flinched away from her in the castle. She thought of the way he stood by and watched while Ramsay had his way with her. She thought of the way his hand felt in hers when they jumped to freedom, and how he coaxed her into the river while they ran.

“Maybe it is easier, but I think Theon is coming back. He’s trying, anyway, and he’ll do whatever he needs to for me to be safe.”

“So would I,” Brienne offered. “Pod and I will do whatever we need to for you to be safe.”

“Wonderful,” Sansa said with the slightest of smiles. “Erase our trail.”

 

 

“Tell me about your sister.”

Theon, walking ahead of her, did not look back, but his head tilted toward her. “What about her?”

Sansa hardly cared. She just wanted the quiet to break open, the woods to be more than cracking branches and crunching snow. “Is she kind? A good leader? Will she turn me away?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted after a few minutes of thought. “I hadn’t seen her for years. When I went back, we weren’t exactly on the best of terms.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t - you know how I was.”

Cocky. Expectant. Eager to please, but quick to take advantage. Yes, Sansa knew how Theon was. “Do you think she’ll be unhappy to see you again?”

The silence was tense this time. Perhaps she shouldn’t have broken it.

“She came for me,” Theon said.

“What?”

“When I was captured. Yara came for me. Men died when they tried to break me out, but I was too afraid to leave.” His fingers worried at loose threads in his coat - Sansa would have to repair that, if she could - while he thought. “I’m not sure she’ll forgive me for that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ve forgiven you for worse,” Sansa said.

Theon did look at her then, surprised. “Have you?”

“I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

“Maybe there’s hope, then,” he said, a little warmth shining through.

The silence that fell was the bearable sort. The crunching snow and cracking branches were a little closer to music than before.

 

 

“It’s funny,” Sansa told him one night. “I’m less scared of wolves than I am of hounds, now.”

Theon had a knife in one hand, and he held Sansa’s hand in the other. The first time they held hands in the dark, it was so they wouldn’t feel alone if they woke in the middle of the night. After a couple of weeks, it was because neither fell asleep if the other wasn’t within reach.

“You’re a wolf,” he pointed out sleepily.

“Not a very good one, apparently.”

“The best of them.” Sansa was happy for the dark. Neither of them had to pretend that they weren’t thinking of other wolves, each one braver than the last. She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

 

 

It wasn’t the woods that brought them trouble, in the end. They crossed forgotten trails and waded through streams. They hid in ditches when people came by. They held each other at night, forgoing a fire. It was survival, and the both of them had grown so accustomed to it that using each other was second nature.

It was the towns that shook their foundations.

Sansa wasn’t sure where they were, exactly; very near the border of the North and the Riverlands, but she wasn’t sure which side she was on.

A grimy man came up to the two of them in a tavern, clapping a hand down on Theon’s shoulder. Theon froze, large eyes going bright with anxiety.

“Pretty girl,” the man said, nodding at Sansa.

“Aye,” Theon said thickly.

Maybe it was Ramsay’s treatment, or perhaps everything Sansa had been through the past few years, but she found herself unable to tell whether the man was being complimentary or smarmy. He grinned at her, at her friend. “Where’d you get her?”

Sansa shifted closer to Theon, nudging her shoulder under one of his arms. He accommodated, but she felt his breathing grow labored. “I’m from further North,” she said sweetly. “My husband is taking me to visit his sister’s family in Highgarden.”

He gave Sansa a hungry look. “Always been partial toward redheads, myself.”

Theon gave a sharp inhale and put one hand high on her thigh. “Me too.”

They didn’t stay long after the man left. Theon excused himself to find the baker, and when Sansa followed him, she saw that he was going to vomit behind the tavern.

She wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, but didn’t dare. “Theon?”

He hurriedly wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“Just tired,” he lied. He was on his knees in the snow, so she lowered herself to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She was at a loss; how could she help if she didn’t know what was wrong? “I shouldn’t have touched you like that, not without talking about it first.”

“The way I touched you was worse,” Theon said. “It wasn’t your hand.” He did not say that it had been the man; he did not have to say it. “And you had to deal with Him in Winterfell; you shouldn’t have more men on you everywhere else.”

She nearly laughed. “You have just as much a right to be afraid to be touched as I do.”

“I can’t protect you if one touch makes me sick.”

“We’ll just have to protect each other.” Sansa sat with him until the green tint left his face, and then a little longer. “For what it’s worth -”

“What?” When she didn’t answer, Theon looked at her, perplexed. “What is it?”

Cheeks inexplicably warm, Sansa looked at her hands. “For what it’s worth, I’m not so bothered by touching when you’re the one doing it.”

Theon stood, looking about at baffled as she felt. Baffled, but gentle when he offered his hand to pull her up. “For what it’s worth, I feel the same.”

 

 

“What’s the first thing you want to eat when you’re rich again?” Sansa was only asking because she didn’t like the way raw fish squished between her teeth, but Theon cocked his head in thought nonetheless.

“I won’t be rich,” he said absently.

“Anything is rich compared to this.”

They hadn’t been able to shoot anything in days; even if they had, Sansa wasn’t sure that they would have been willing to light a fire to cook it. That left them with raw fish from a stream, raw and slimy. It was worth eating, if only to quell the roar of her stomach, but hardly.

“Bacon,” he decided. “Lots and lots of bacon.”

Sansa could almost smell it. “Gods, yes.”

“And chicken,” he added, a sigh sweeping through him. “I always liked chicken.”

“I would kill a man for a chicken.” Then, grinning at Theon, “I would marry a man for a chicken.”

He snorted. “That’s big talk.”

“It’s a big wish.”

“What’ll you want to eat?”

“Lemon cakes,” she said, no hesitation. “By the dozen.”

“You always did like sweets the best,” he said distantly. “I remember.”

“Yes. That hasn’t changed,” Sansa agreed. “You didn’t. Not so much as me, anyway.”

“I loved them,” he scoffed. “Who doesn’t?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No - no, I remember everything from when we were children. You always snuck me the bits of dessert you didn’t want.”

“It isn’t that I didn’t want them,” he mumbled, ripping a bit of meat off the fish and busying his mouth with it.

“Why, then?”

“You liked sweets the best,” he repeated.

Sansa gaped at him. Theon had teased her relentlessly when they were young - about being fat when she was small, about having hair that could glow in the dark, about her inability to shoot. If she fell short, he noticed. He had not been kind to her. “You’re joking.”

“I wish. I was like a puppy. Did you really not notice?”

“You were terrible!”

“I couldn’t very well let you know!” Theon looked as uncomfortable about it as she felt, but Sansa couldn’t ignore the way a little delight mixed in with her surprise. “You would have laughed, and then I would have had to die. I would never have lived it down.”

“You really wouldn’t have. Gods, Robb would have ruined you.”

Theon laughed out loud, for once not haunted by the memory of her family. “Your father would have ‘taken me out on a hunt’ to let me down easy.”

“Arya would have teased me relentlessly,” Sansa said.

“Why?”

“You were just - you were so Theon. We knew you so well, and there would have been so much to mock me about.” Sansa grinned. “You saw how she was about Joffrey when they came to visit, and she didn’t even know him.”

If any of them had known how Joffrey was, Sansa would never have been encouraged. Her crush would have been nipped in the bud.

“What would you have said?”

Sansa jolted back to the present. “What?”

“If you’d known about how I felt. What would you have said?” He didn’t look her in the eye; he stared resolutely at a spot somewhere beyond her left shoulder.

“I probably would have liked you, too,” she admitted. “I liked just about any boy that showed any interest, and you were the only highborn boy I knew all that well.”

“What, giving you desserts wasn’t good enough to earn your affections?”

“It was the hair pulling,” she said sympathetically. “That killed the potential.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

Sansa grinned, and Theon looked almost surprised. That was something he would have said before, back when a woman’s affections was something of value. “Do.”

 

 

“We need money,” she told Theon in a low voice. They needed to stock up on supplies, but they had no way of knowing how much money they would need for the crossing to the Iron Islands. Maybe nothing; maybe everything.

“Unless you have a priceless Stark heirloom under your cloak, I’m not sure that we have many options,” he said.

Sansa licked her lips, looking around the grey streets. Her gaze latched onto a scantily clad woman, and her mouth went dry. “I may know a way.”

Theon’s eyes charted her gaze, and he emphatically shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“Men like redheads.”

“You are a lady, not a whore.”

“Fat lot of good that does us here,” she hissed. Their destination was only a few days away, and money might be what stopped them from reaching it.

“You’re better than that,” he said firmly. “We’ll find a way. We’ll sell the horses and walk the rest of the way, if we have to.” He did not say that it would more than double their travel time. As usual, she caught his drift wordlessly.

“I can do this,” she said weakly. So what if her heart felt faint at the idea of some stranger touching her? So what if she felt nauseous when a man so much as let his cloak brush hers? Theon was the only safe man, and she would get him home if it killed her.

“Sansa Stark,” he said softly, almost reverently. “You are worth more than this. We will find another way.”

His cloak brushed hers while they walked, and she thought that she might like to take a step closer. When she did, he put a guiding hand on the small of her back. Sansa smiled.

 

 

She liked it when she heard Theon hum while he set up camp, especially if he didn’t seem to know he was doing it. She liked the way his jaw tightened when he thought. She liked the lofty lift of his chin when he was lost in thought. She liked his vocabulary, and that he never assumed that he would have to dumb himself down so she would understand him.

She liked him a great deal, and each passing day made that fact less terrifying. A new fact took that fear, and that fact grew more apparent each day. Sansa liked Theon, but she was also finding that she was attracted to him.

Sansa liked it when Theon put a hand on her back to lead her. She liked it when he took her hand in towns, and she liked it when his arm went around her waist to keep away unwelcome eyes. She liked it when he rubbed warmth back into her hands in the evenings. She liked it when he leaned into her at night, even if it was only to preserve body heat. She liked it when his eyes latched onto her in taverns, when her coat was off, and it had nothing to do with body heat.

At first, the desperate wanting made her sick. After everything she had been through, after everything that had been done to her, the idea of ever wanting another man was abhorrent. She could still feel what Ramsay had done. She could hear his voice in her ear when there was nothing else to listen to. If a branch cracked at night, she was certain that he was coming to her. 

Ramsay Bolton had left his mark on her, and nothing would change that. Every time Theon did something kind, or made her laugh, or stood in such a way that the light hit him just so, she thought that maybe the mark Ramsay left didn’t have to be such a prominent one. Theon couldn’t erase the trail, but perhaps they could forge a new one.

“I’m cold,” she told him one night. She was leaning against his side, but it couldn’t keep out the chill.

He looked around, doubtful. “We’ve gotten pretty far south; I don’t think the Bolton men are around. If you want me to light a fire -”

“No,” she said immediately. “No, we shouldn’t risk it if we don’t have to.”

“We’ll reach the ports in a day or two,” he said. “You’ll never need to go without a fire again.”

Sansa grinned at the thought, but it really wasn’t the point. “That’s true enough, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m cold now.”

“If you don’t want me to light a fire, Sansa, I really don’t know what -”

She put a hand to his cheek and pulled him in, pressing her lips against his. It was, she thought distantly, her first kiss with someone who wasn’t monstrous. Her first kiss with a man who wasn’t trying to use her, or pretend she was somebody else. It was her first kiss that she gave with the full knowledge of what she was getting into.

Theon was breathless when she pulled away, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of the kiss or if it was something in his head.

“That’s a little bit better,” she said, smile crooked and broad.

“What are you doing?” He pulled his face away, but kept his body planted on the ground by hers. 

“Something I’ve wanted to do for ages.”

“No.” He abruptly shook his head. “You really don’t want this.”

She angled herself toward him, wrapping her arms around him in the tightest hug she could manage. His hands went to her sides to steady her, but he didn’t pull her closer. Sansa felt as though he was taking her in half steps; he was battling with everything he had, but he couldn’t decide who the enemy was.

“I want you,” she whispered into his shoulder.

“You don’t,” he said, voice hoarse. His hands trembled on her hips, caught somewhere between horror and longing.

“I do. I really, really do.” She dragged her lips up the column of his neck, breathing in his pulse, nuzzling the hair of his jawline. “I want you.”

“My lady -”

“My lord,” she sighed. Sansa’s breath was somewhat steady, but she could feel her heart speeding up. She had been attracted to men before - of course she had, she wasn’t blind. She had always assumed that it came in short, fleeting bursts, the way she felt when Loras gave her a flower, or when Joffrey kissed her for the first time. 

There was nothing short about the ache between her legs. The thunderous applause of her heart was not a burst. The way the skin of her hips burned at the mere suggestion of his fingertips touching her was not fleeting. Sansa Stark wanted Theon Greyjoy, and it threatened to overwhelm her.

His breath was jagged. “I’m not a lord.”

“My lord,” she said again. She ran her hands along his cheeks, and he leaned into them. “You will always be my lord.”

“Sansa, I can’t - I don’t have -”

“I know.” She had seen him, once, bruised and bloody in the kennels. Ramsay had taken her down to ‘look at the hounds’, but it had all been so she would see what little was left of Theon. He had been stripped down to nothing, and she saw the ruin that lay between his legs.

Finally, when her heart was on the verge of bursting into flames, Sansa let her mouth glide over his. This was fleeting; she didn’t want to take something that he wasn’t giving. His face followed hers when she pulled away, and she allowed herself to smile.

“I know, Theon. I know what he did.”

Theon shuddered once - even when all she said was ‘he’, the memory threatened to overwhelm him. She ran her fingers over his collar bone, and the shiver changed to something else entirely. “So, you know that I can’t give you anything.”

Sansa smiled again, feeling softer than she thought she was capable of. She had not been soft for a very long time. “I want everything from you. As much as you can give.”

“I can’t -”

“As much as you can give,” she said again, “and no more than that.”

This time, when she kissed him, he sighed into her. When his hands went for the hem of her dress, she grinned against his lips. He very nearly smiled back.

 

 

Sansa didn’t see much of a similarity between Theon’s face and Yara’s, but there was something about the set of Yara’s shoulders that brought the Winterfell courtyard and the sharp wail of swordplay to mind.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Yara said, skeptical.

“What do you mean?” Theon was still so thin, but he held himself like he wasn’t in danger of crumbling.

“You stole the bride of the Warden of the North. You brought her here. I hope you have a plan for when they realize where she’s gone.”

Sansa waited for him to say that he had not stolen the bride, not like that. She waited for him to deny it all, to deny her, but he didn’t. When she turned her head just enough to see the the curve of his face, she was surprised to see a hint of a smile.

“When they come for her,” he said, “the Ironborn will grind them into dust.”

Yara raised one eyebrow.

Theon set his jaw. “Sansa Stark will be safe here. I’ll see to it myself, if I have to.”

“You won’t be at it alone,” his sister sighed. She gave Sansa an appraising look. “If we’re to go to war over a woman, at least she’s a bonny one.”

When Sansa smiled, Yara smiled back. When Theon reached back for her hand, nobody questioned it.

 

 

When news of Ramsay Bolton’s death reached the sea, Theon kissed her until her lips burned and her breath came in ragged gasps. He did not ask her to marry him.

When the Ironborn pledged themselves to the Mother of Dragons, Sansa agreed to stay away from the battles. She agreed to stay at home, where she could keep an eye on things for the Greyjoy children. Theon did not propose, nor did he promise to marry her when he returned, but it was enough that he promised to return at all.

They slept in the same room every night. Theon sat next to her when they had guests, whispering scathing jokes in her ear that made her choke on her wine. Sansa had every scar, every freckle, every hard line and smooth curve on his body memorized.

Sansa loved him, but she was not sure that he wanted to marry her.

“Who will take the Iron Islands after Yara dies?” She asked him the question in the dead of night, with her back pressed against his chest and his fingers rubbing gentle circles into her hips.

“I’m not sure. Me, maybe. I don’t think she’ll ever have children, so there isn’t a natural choice.”

He did not have to say that he would never have children, so his would never have a claim.

She flipped over to face him, instinctively pressing her nose into the pulsepoint of his neck to breathe him in. “Did you ever imagine your children leading them? Back when we were young, I mean.”

“Of course,” he said, lips on her temple. He didn’t freeze up at questions like that anymore.

“So you imagined getting married?”

“Of course,” he said again. “That’s what lords do.”

“Did you have any girl in mind?” She had a fleeting, fanciful hope that he would say her name. It was foolish - back then, she never would have wanted him.

“I had every girl in mind,” he said with a snort. “I never really expected to have any of them, though.”

“Do you have a girl in mind now?” She almost smiled when his hands, which had been rubbing against her back in long strokes, froze.

“I don’t think any girl would want to marry me now,” he said carefully. “My legacy is -”

“Legacies are for men who are too afraid to live now,” she scoffed.

“I could never give my wife children, Sansa. That is a loss too great to ask anyone to bear.”

“I would bear it,” she whispered. “I would bear it a thousand times over, if I got to marry you.”

“I would never ask you to.”

She leaned back to look at his face. His eyes were soft, but there was something sad in them that she had not seen in a long time. “I’m asking you, Theon. Marry me.”

“My lady,” he said, lips quirking. “You don’t have to do this on my behalf.”

“I’m not. I’m actually very selfish, Theon Greyjoy. I want everything you have to offer, and I’m afraid that I don’t have your hand yet.”

His hands crept around her legs to her inner thighs. “I assure you, my hands are all yours.”

“Theon,” she hissed, laughter edging its way in.

“Sansa,” he crooned back. 

“Marry me.”

His smile faded, but a light grew in his eyes. “Alright. Alright, if that’s what you truly want, I’ll talk to my sister tomorrow.” He kissed her then, hands steady and lips sharp with joy.

Theon Greyjoy and Sansa Stark never had a legacy in the form of children. Their legacy was carried through songs, through whispered stories of tentacle-less krakens and sly wolves that toppled Houses. Their legacy was recorded in history books. Their legacy was told to children at night, while they imagined horrible beginnings and happy endings.


End file.
